Report from the divestment frontline

In September, East Sussex County Council’s Pension Committee voted on a motion to divest the East Sussex Pension Fund out of oil, gas and coal companies. Would this be the moment the council finally aligned its pension fund with its pledge to slash carbon emissions? Divest East Sussex campaigner Mark Engineer reports on what happened next.

Pension committee meeting. Three words that should never be allowed near one another. Bad enough on their own. Together, dull enough to make a grown man shudder.

Still, that’s where I and a bunch of fellow concerned citizens ended up on 25 September. But for God’s sake why? you might ask, and I wouldn’t blame you. Well, we went to see if after years of delay, obfuscation and wasted public money, and in the face of more than a decade of peaceful protest (including a recent rooftop occupation), East Sussex County Council (ESCC) were finally going to do the right thing and divest (i.e. pull out) its pension fund from fossil fuels.

‘You can’t all come in’

I should make it clear our hopes weren’t high. We had it on good authority that the two non-Tories on the Pension Committee were going to vote in favour of divestment, but the three Tories would block it. (In case I should be accused of politicising this, I’m not. They’ve already done so in the past.)

So, a couple of dozen of us rocked up on this grey and windy day. We were greeted by some familiar sights There was the perimeter fencing. There were the security guards, paid thousands of pounds of public money by Keith Glazier, Head of the Council, to keep peaceful protestors out. And there was the dear old building manager. A man who had been genuinely perplexed by how protesters had got on the roof last time, as if ladders were somehow an alien concept.

“You can’t all come in,” he declared. “Ten people only.” This was confusing. Why was ten deemed an acceptable number? It soon became clear that I wasn’t going to be one of them, in any case. “You, sir, are not coming in,” he said firmly. “Not after last time.” He explained I’d been heard on the phone talking to the people on the roof. This is now apparently enough to get barred from public meetings. Seems a bit draconian. Still, peaceful protestors are getting five years in jail now. Compared to their sacrifice, I can probably deal with being banned from ESCC meetings.

Operation leaf blower

Ten were selected and duly trooped in. The rest of us were annoyed to be left out in the cold. But protestors are nothing if not resilient. And we had a back-up plan. The meeting was being livestreamed so we gathered round to watch it on a mobile phone. But as soon as it started, a man with a leaf blower came and started working nearby. (Of all things, a leaf blower! Surely one of the stupidest inventions ever.)

We went round the corner. The guy with the leaf blower followed us. We moved again. He moved again. Was this a cunning plan by the all-powerful Glazier to stop us hearing proceedings?

We finally found a quiet spot near a rear entrance and settled down to watch. Watching a pension committee meeting. On a phone. Outside a municipal office block. Any romantic notions I had of activism finally died.  A security guard looked on, amused. You couldn’t really blame him.

‘My best friend’s an environmentalist’

The standard of debate in the meeting was depressingly low, even by modern political standards. Cllr Paul Redstone (Con) tried to paint himself green (sadly not literally – that would have been quite interesting) by saying that his daughter works for an environmental charity. He says this a lot. It always seems a curious argument, as if he’s somehow virtuous because of the actions of a completely different person to whom he happens to be related. (Rishi Sunak used to talk about his daughters being eco-warriors, as he signed off licences for new fossil fuel exploration.) Cllr Ian Hollidge (Con) wittered on about whales and Japan for some reason. Even his fellow Tories looked embarrassed at this nonsense. Still worse was all the self-congratulation. Because they were doing so well. That was the thing. They were doing great stuff. Even if they weren’t going to divest. In fact there was no need to divest! Because of all the great stuff they were doing! Nobody seemed able to say exactly what it was, but they were definitely doing it. The head of the pension committee, Cllr Gerard Fox (Con), wanted it known that he’d been doing a lot of work on this. Really a lot. To which the response can only be, IT’S YOUR JOB, DUDE. WELL DONE FOR DOING YOUR JOB.

Cllr Fox is a sanguine sort of chap, in the old-fashioned sense of having a red face, rather than a sunny personality. In personality terms, he generally wears an air of benign pomposity. Until someone annoys him, that is. Which Cllr Georgia Taylor (Green) duly did, by daring to disagree with him. Fox waxed even redder. Faced with facts, he tried to mansplain. When it didn’t work, he got shouty. “You’ve got the facts wrong,” he wobbled, face going even redder. “YOU WEREN’T LISTENING.”

Fox, interrupted

The vote was taken. Result was as expected. The East Sussex Pension Fund would retain its fossil fuel investments. Cllr Fox started banging on again about what a great day it was for democracy or something. Then, ESCC pension fund member and activist Jane Ripley rose and made an intervention. Fox couldn’t believe it. Interrupted again! These women were really getting above themselves! It was all that Pankhurst woman’s fault.

He wittered on about how much he valued Jane’s attendance, though not enough to let her actually speak. This seemed a strange sort of value system. He didn’t mean it anyway – you could tell by his face, which had turned positively puce. Jane kept going. Fox expostulated. Then he cut the livestream. So we missed the most interesting bit. But luckily one of our activists had cunningly smuggled in a camera (well, taken in their phone) and captured the whole scene. You can see it here. (As a bonus, there’s some cracking denialism by Barry the “physicist” on the thread under the clip. He’s done the science, you know.)

So, there we were. Result as expected. The ESCC fossil fools are not yet for turning. But we’re not for giving up. We’ve told them we’ll be back. And we will. Watch this space.

You can join the next festive-themed divestment protest at County Hall in Lewes on Tuesday 3 December – full details here.